The medical device industry produces a wide variety of electronic and mechanical devices for treating patient medical conditions. Depending upon the medical condition, medical devices may be surgically implanted or connected externally to the patient receiving treatment.
Implantable medical devices are commonly used today to treat patients suffering from various ailments. One type of implantable medical device is a bone conduction hearing aid. A bone conduction hearing aid works by converting the sound signal into a mechanical vibratory stimulus. Heretofore, the vibrating portion of the aid (vibrator) transmits its vibrations to the bone structure of the skull. The vibration of the skull stimulates the cochlea and a sound is perceived.
There are generally five major types of bone conduction devices, including: (1) External bone conduction devices where a vibrator is held to the side of the head by a band that traverses around the head (2) Bone anchored hearing devices where a screw is placed through the skin into the skull and a vibrator transducer is hung to the side of the screw (abutment) (3) Magnetic bone conduction hearing implants, where magnets are implanted and attached to the skull and externally positioned magnets provide a normal force to the side of the head to hold the vibrator to the head; (4) Teeth vibrators where the vibrator is attached to a tooth or a dental implant (5) Active implantable bone conduction devices, where a transducer is implanted under the skin to vibrate the skull.
Some of these bone conduction hearing aids may be partially implantable where a power source is worn outside the patient's body whereas the vibrator is implanted subcutaneously, such as in the type 5 recited in the preceding paragraph. This system requires an antenna to be placed on the patient's skin over the site of an implanted receiver to provide energy and control to the implanted device. Such type of hearing aids receive their operating energy from an external power source like batteries using a radio frequency link, typically to avoid need for implanted batteries. The received energy is then utilized to drive a vibrator that is implanted within the patient. Typical transcutaneous bone conduction hearing aids of today, however, use a high amount of battery power due to the energy demanding transcutaneous link that comprises an external processor with a radio transmitter configured to send a radio frequency magnetic field into the implant in the patient's head via a set of coils.
Since this energy demanding transmission is required to be continuously running in order to enable the hearing aid user to hear, it would be desirable to have a less energy consuming bone conduction hearing aid that includes an implantable prosthetic system and is configured to receive its operating energy from an external power source using a radio frequency link. That is, it would be advantageous to have an efficient energy utilization mechanism, i.e. solution that allows transmission of energy only when there is a need for the operation of such implanted medical devices like in an implanted transcutaneous bone conduction hearing aid.
Because, in known systems, the continued operation of the external signal processor during times of low energy requirement unnecessarily drains the power source such as battery, thereby potentially depleting power source. Therefore, there is a need to overcome the above disadvantage. The present disclosure provides at least an alternative to the prior art bone conduction hearing aids.